[quote author=“drmount”]As for your other questions, I don’t see their relevance. It would be equally as pointless to ask you what you would do if God appeared in your room and told you to stop being an athiest…it’s not going to happen, so why discuss it?

But it already did happen recently, didn’t it? How did the LDS church determine that polygamy was wrong. . . when it used to be right?

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I have not misrepresented Mormonism. I am in the middle of small kids activities this morning with my 5 and 3 year olds but later on today I’ll review your notations. I welcome your perspective. This ought to be good.

btw, regarding your pm to me, I still attend the Mormon church sacrament meeting one hour a week oh about three times a month with my wife and kids since she is very devout and chooses to remain so. I have met with my bishop and stake president to express my complete non belief and desire to be completely uninvolved with their religion. I cannot in good conscience participate in something I know is patantly false and invented. I tried to do it for years, the duality really wore me down.

[quote author=“drmount”]... I wanted to mention a small correction…that non-Mormons go to Spirit Prison and Mormons go to Paradise during the time between death and the resurrection.

This isn’t what is taught in the Book of Mormon or in the church, in my experience. Read Alma 40:

11 Now, concerning the state of the soul between death and the resurrection—Behold, it has been made known unto me by an angel, that the spirits of all men, as soon as they are departed from this mortal body, yea, the spirits of all men, whether they be good or evil, are taken home to that God who gave them life.
12 And then shall it come to pass, that the spirits of those who are righteous are received into a state of happiness, which is called paradise, a state of rest, a state of peace, where they shall rest from all their troubles and from all care, and sorrow.
13 And then shall it come to pass, that the spirits of the wicked, yea, who are evil—for behold, they have no part nor portion of the Spirit of the Lord; for behold, they chose evil works rather than good; therefore the spirit of the devil did enter into them, and take possession of their house—and these shall be cast out into outer darkness; there shall be weeping, and wailing, and gnashing of teeth, and this because of their own iniquity, being led captive by the will of the devil.
14 Now this is the state of the souls of the wicked, yea, in darkness, and a state of awful, fearful looking for the fiery indignation of the wrath of God upon them; thus they remain in this state, as well as the righteous in paradise, until the time of their resurrection.

Entrance into paradise, or a happy state, is not dependent upon being Mormon…it is based on your righteousness.

You falter here. It might be hair splitting but I’ll go the distance in explanation. Correct Mormon theology can be summed up by the revelation that the Mormon prophet Joseph F. Smith alleged that he received from Jesus Christ in 1918 found here in the book called Doctrine and Covenants section 138, review:

Regardless of what religion you are on earth, if you die not having heard the gospel, or even if you were just plain wicked in denying the prophets, Mormon theology states that your spirit goes to an afterlife prison and you get a chance to repent. Jesus does not go there personally and do it, but, supposedly, Jesus sends commissioned Mormons to go and preach his gospel. I know, I know, this completely refutes what the book of Mormon teaches and I will get to that a little later but here, read this from Doctrine & Covenants 138 recorded and sustained as bonefide revelation from Jesus Christ in 1918:

28 And I [the Mormon Prophet Joseph F. Smith, relative of the first Joseph Smith Junior] wondered at the words of Peter—wherein he said that the Son of God preached unto the spirits in prison, who sometime were disobedient, when once the long-suffering of God waited in the days of Noah—and how it was possible for him to preach to those spirits and perform the necessary labor among them in so short a time.
29 And as I wondered, my eyes were opened, and my understanding quickened, and I perceived that the Lord went not in person among the wicked and the disobedient who had rejected the truth, to teach them;
30 But behold, from among the righteous, he organized his forces and appointed messengers, clothed with power and authority, and commissioned them to go forth and carry the light of the gospel to them that were in darkness, even to fall the spirits of men; and thus was the gospel preached to the dead.
31 And the chosen messengers went forth to declare the acceptable day of the Lord and proclaim liberty to the captives who were bound, even unto all who would repent of their sins and receive the gospel.
32 Thus was the gospel preached to those who had died in their sins, without a knowledge of the truth, or in transgression, having rejected the prophets.
33 These were taught faith in God, repentance from sin, vicarious baptism for the remission of sins, the gift of the Holy Ghost by the laying on of hands,
34 And all other principles of the gospel that were necessary for them to know in order to qualify themselves that they might be judged according to men in the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit.
35 And so it was made known among the dead, both small and great, the unrighteous as well as the faithful, that redemption had been wrought through the sacrifice of the Son of God upon the cross.

Now then, when one of these less righteous or even wicked persons, who abides in spirit prison, accepts the gospel message, he must wait until some still alive LDS practitioner enters the temple and performs the Mormon baptism, and other temple ordinances in behalf of this dead person… so that that dead person can then be freed from spirit prison.

I wince to even write this explanation because it so directly goes against the words written in the Book of Mormon such as:

book of Alma chapt 34: 33-35 reads:

33 And now, as I said unto you before, as ye have had so many witnesses, therefore, I beseech of you that ye do not procrastinate the day of your repentance until the end; for after this day of life, which is given us to prepare for eternity, behold, if we do not improve our time while in this life, then cometh the night of darkness wherein there can be no labor performed.
34 Ye cannot say, when ye are brought to that awful crisis, that I will repent, that I will return to my God. Nay, ye cannot say this; for that same spirit which doth possess your bodies at the time that ye go out of this life, that same spirit will have power to possess your body in that eternal world.
35 For behold, if ye have procrastinated the day of your repentance even until death, behold, ye have become subjected to the spirit of the devil, and he doth seal you his; therefore, the Spirit of the Lord hath withdrawn from you, and hath no place in you, and the devil hath all power over you; and this is the final state of the wicked.

If you attended sacrament meeting today, as I did, the message about the resurrection was loud and clear. Those who gave talks on the subject in my chapel chose to dole out plenty of supporting evidence regarding to the preaching of the Mormon gospel to those who remain in spirit prison.

drmount writes:
Spirit Prison will be occupied by the unrighteous. Can a non-Mormon be righteous? Of course! So, such will be allowed into a happy post-mortal state. Can a Mormon be unrighteous? Obviously, yes…so Spirit Prison will have Mormons as well.

Section 138 shows how those who have not heard the Mormon gospel or lived a wicked life die and go to spirit prison. So then what happens to the fate of these in spirit prison? Mormon theology states that they will have the Mormon gospel preached to them. Incidentally, if you think about this, what moron is going to turn that down? It isn’t like there will be a competing Jehovah’s Witnesses message to confuse the choice of the damned.

drmount writes:
Basically, from what I’ve been taught in the church and personally believe, we cannot judge a person, only the Savior can (the Bible even teaches this). The Lord will judge each of us based on what we know to be true.

I guess if you sign up for the whole Jesus is the judge doctrine, then, yes… that is what you will think.

But re read section 138. A human can live a wicked life, deny the prophets, and still get the Mormon gospel preached to him in spirit prison so as to garner himself a chance to finally embrace the Mormon religion and be saved.

drmount writes:
The African bushman from 200 B.C. can enter heaven just as readily as I can…if he follows whatever degree of truth he has understanding of as well as I follow whatever degree of truth I have understanding of.

the african bushman will, according to your theology, get the gospel preached to him while he sits twiddling thumbs in spirit prison. This is problematic however. You must consider that the african bushmen throughout the eons of UNrecorded history never took all that great of an effort to record everyone’s name and birthday and whatnot. Of course, these are the items Mormons scurry about in their spare time as elderly painstakingly researching and compling and submitting to the temple…so as to free as many emprisoned souls as possible.

Well and good but, many billions of people have died and are now faceless and nameless as if they never existed. So picture the poor 15,000 year old bushman all dressed up in Mormonism but since no one knows he existed, he’s got no where to go…. because no one can go to the Mormon temple and do his temple baptism!

and if you try to argue that we don’t need to know this 15,000 year old bushman’s name because god knows every hair on every person’s head.. then what in tarnation is all the Mormon name collecting busy work about? What with the geneological obsessions and whatnot! Busy busy busy. Let’s give these retired Mormons a break! Send them to the golf links for a change.

There is no possible way for me to determine what you, the Baptist next door, or even my own spouse understand as truth…so I have no right to judge whether or not you’ll be in heaven, hell, spirit prison, paradise, or whatever you want to call our post-mortal state.

You seemed to be very concerned with other people’s afterlife states, what we all know or don’t know and how that plays out in your religous world view. I don’t recall suggesting that you can predict if I am going to heaven or hell.

Only God knows what is in your heart, mind, and soul…so only he is able to judge how well or poorly you have lived up to what you know.

But that doesn’t seem to matter. Canonized Mormon scripture found in section 138 completely blows your deviant understanding of what we are to be doing here on earth out of the water. According to 138, it does not actually matter what we do… heck even deny the prophets! It won’t matter! review from the same section 138:

58 The dead who repent will be redeemed, through obedience to the ordinances of the house of God,
59 And after they have paid the penalty of their transgressions, and are washed clean, shall receive a reward according to their works, for they are heirs of salvation.

salvation for all regardless of what you do here on earth. Kind of sounds all Catholic/ purgatory esque.

That’s about all I wanted to say. Perhaps another time I can go over a few other points which you haven’t covered as completely clearly as they should be covered regarding our beliefs.

yes, perhaps you can. Just keep in mind that this forum argues from a position that god is not much more than wishful thinking. Your arguments come from a belief that

1. god is very much an entity who cares enough to send distinct feelings to people so that they can somehow decide that these feelings denote Mormonism—and not the hundreds of other religions with exclusivity claims—is true.
2. god is a polygamous man living next to or around a star named Kolob
3. the highest and holiest form of marriage that we humans can ever attain is polygamy
3. your church posseses an autobiography written by the hand of Father Abraham
4. that men and women can become gods if they are good enough here on earth
5. that some men can read ancient manuscripts and translate them by putting a magic rock in a hat and then peeking into the hat while the words of the manuscript appear.
6. that even though the Book of Mormon reads of millions of Jewish people inhabiting North and South America 1500 years ago, no trace of them exists… but some day soon we’ll discover evidence that vindicates the Book of Mormon and then the world will know… but the world cannot know yet, you know… since Jesus hasn’t come down from the clouds yet… and so if we find these Book of Mormon evidences too soon, no one would need to have faith anymore… because the faith gig would be up…. thus frustrating God’s masterplan for humans to believe in all of the above.

and so forth.

But I suppose the fog that you view the world through cushions the cold prickly existentialisms I am confronted with. I understand that you think I am the one lost in the fog. I think that the one thing that keeps so many theists nailed down to so many religions is that no matter how bizarre the doctrine they are required to subscribe to, they have this low level steady pressure to believe it all since it’s god’s test to see if they will prove themselves faithful to him. All religions have this. Mormonism just has it in spades. You believe only 12 million of the 6.5 billion humans alive today are savvy as to what god really wants humans to do here on earth.

Do you ever stop to think how odd that is? Do you ever saythings like,

now wait a cotton picking minute… polygamy is holy???

and then feel the twist in your gut forcing you to dismiss such treasonous thoughts? And you do dismiss them. Difference between you and I? I learned to embrace the twist. Logical intuition has a clarifying effect on the mind.

[quote author=“drmount”]
As for dissecting every other belief under the sun, I have done so, but have not evaluated every religion out there. . .

That’s a pretty strong claim. You have dissected every other belief under the sun?! Isn’t that a bit of a boast? There are tens of thousands of beliefs, drmount, perhaps even millions, which would make that a lifetime-long field of study. Care to come down a notch or two in your exaggeration?

[quote author=“drmount”]
If you read carefully what I have written in this thread, I believe that I will be judged according to what I understand to be true and so will everyone else. If a Hindu has an internal understanding of truth at a certain level, he will be expected to live his life accordingly…and will be judged accordingly.

I don’t know if you’re ever coming back to this discussion, or if you’re a classic ‘short-timer’ on this forum (we get a lot of those). . . however. . . your claim above has been niggling at me. You suggest that the Nice Guy God will refrain from punishing people after death simply because they had the misfortune of being born into a non-Christian environment. He will be understanding, you imply, of the fact that they learned a different One Truth from their elders. In fact, you seem to be saying that he will judge them based on the rules they learned. Does that mean he’ll pull out a Koran when it comes time to judge a suicide bomber, and potentially deem him an excellent Muslim for having well served the demands of Allah? Further, God would need to consult with the specific rules of the man’s particular sect, since there are several.

Maybe he even took out several dozen people while taking his own life. You believe that God will forgive that part? If not, why not? After all, this poor schmoe was only doing right by the laws he was taught came directly from God, and it’s not his fault that he was handed the wrong book of rules. In his thinking, he was actually acting heroically, so by what justification would God punish him? The acts might be atrocious to you (and to me, and most definitely to the loved ones who were robbed of their kin), but by a certain fundamentalist Muslim standard, this was a noble act aimed at glorifying God.

Are we also to assume that when all the murdered people (now existing in the afterlife) become aware that the Muslim was (we’ll assume) exhonerated by God, that they’ll consider that a fair judgment? “Ah, what the heck, the guy thought he was doing a good thing when he blew my guts to pieces in front of my wife and kids. And God knows best, after all, so let’s see about hooking this guy up with a gaggle of wives already!”

Sorry if I’m butchering that doctrine, by assuming that polygamy is available to ALL men in the afterlife who make it out of ‘Spirit Prison’; I’m ex-Catholic, not ex-Mormon, so you tell me. But I do wonder what would happen to my hypothetical Muslim suicide bomber. If God let him out of spirit prison, is Muslim dude now eligible to climb the entire ladder of afterlife success, eventually earning his own planet, the harem of women, and all the rest of the afterlife goodies? How about those very devout biblical literalists led by the infamous Reverend Fred Phelps? They are living by the letter of biblical law, yet have caused great pain and distress to others on Earth, including other Christians. But why would God have any beef with sicko Fred, or any of his flock, if they were only following the words that have been credited to God himself? I’m sure in Fred’s mind, he is the most righteous among righteous men.

Makes the earthly realm seem like rather a pointless exercise, if all you end up doing is standing before some OTHER supernatural being than the one you thought you were loving and serving, scratching your head and feeling like a dope. “Gee, thanks, God. I killed (or threatened or tortured or oppressed or berated) all these people, thinking that you wanted me to, and now I find out the One Truth was totally different than I thought!”

I’m betting you can’t come up with a logical explanation for why it would make sense that things work that way, drmount—to let people waste their lives on believing their own parents and holy men, rather than some Mormon missionary (assuming they ever encountered or even heard of Mormonism in their lifetime)—but please, if you can show how I’m wrong, I’m all eyes.

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[quote author=“drmount”]
If you read carefully what I have written in this thread, I believe that I will be judged according to what I understand to be true and so will everyone else. If a Hindu has an internal understanding of truth at a certain level, he will be expected to live his life accordingly…and will be judged accordingly.

Mia wrote:You suggest that the Nice Guy God will refrain from punishing people after death simply because they had the misfortune of being born into a non-Christian environment. He will be understanding, you imply, of the fact that they learned a different One Truth from their elders. In fact, you seem to be saying that he will judge them based on the rules they learned. Does that mean he’ll pull out a Koran when it comes time to judge a suicide bomber, and potentially deem him an excellent Muslim for having well served the demands of Allah? Further, God would need to consult with the specific rules of the man’s particular sect, since there are several.

Mia you just hit on one of the logical fallacies that turned me on my ear when I was trying to untangle myself from religion.

drmount espouses this oddball belief:

I believe that I will be judged according to what I understand to be true and so will everyone else.

so by this logic, if drmount truly believes this recipe for salvation, and if he truly loved his children above all else, he would teach them a religion to believe in that is so easy to adhere to that there is no possible way his kids can NOT make the highest grade of salvation possible.

say, a religion of free thinking, zero consequence, action only out of logical deduction/ greater good, question everything, trust nothing but your own intellect, and oh… chocoloate lollipops for sacrament every sunday in your pajamas just because its my damn religion and I say so. (this to satisfy the unwritten requirement that religions be dogmatic)

Any easy to follow religion could be invented and forced upon a child. We see hundreds of religions today. BY and large, the children born into them all grow up thinking that their particular religion is The True One. I think a good case can be made for my hyptothetical religion.

Then when the kid dies, having lived 100% to the tenets of my made up religion of the Free Thinking Chocolate Lollipop (which I tried to design here on the spot so that the kids would live a nice, guilt free sans god life) would therefore be judged according to what they know… by drmount’s god of course… and therefore be permitted to enter into drmount’s god’s rest. Because they would be acting and responding in life according to what they know to be true.

But no. Instead, drmount chooses to bring his kids up in an impossible scenario plagued by guilt for the most minor infractions. A religion that preaches that a human’s natural inclination of beingness is evil and an enemy to god. His kids cannot masturbate, drink beer, french kiss before marriage, smoke, watch R rated movies, perform any shopping on sunday, recreate in any way (sports etc) on sunday, the list is endless when you consider that the religion of drmount’s god has even invented guilt for things NOT done (sins of omission). Is there a kid growing up today who does not experience many if not all of these things? Well, that kid will grow up plagued with self-esteem issues as an unworthy creature constantly blighted in the eyes of drmount’s god.

Hey Noggin’—
I agonized for years about the fact that I never brought my children up in the Catholic church like I was brought up, because I thought living a life without religion would be somehow empty, or meaningless, or without direction. And now, as each day passes, and I consider the decisions I’ve made regarding relgion, I am so glad and so grateful that I did not indoctrinate my children. They are a part of a new generation that I hope will grow and thrive, of human beings who are not tied to any particular dogma or sect or denomination. They are just members of the human race, who have been taught basic decency and manners and respect at home and in school, and who are beautiful, vibrant, innocent, glorious creatures. And I hope they drink beer, and smoke pot (but not cigarettes, because lung cancer really sucks) and French kiss before marriage (which I believe is possibly one of the greatest pleasures of adolescent life…I recommend French kissing well into the married years…) and seeing R movies, and mowing the lawn on Sundays and all those things that some religions have rules against. I look forward to the day when the Bibles, and the Korans and the Books of Mormon of the world are used to prop up lopsided table legs, and go under leaky plant pots, and are taught to children in schools just as Greek mythology is—wonderful, amazing tales of fantasy and imagination, with vast stores of wisdom and folly, which are fascinating and inspiring and NOT REAL. You know what’s real? French kissing in an “R” rated movie after drinking beer and smoking pot.

I feel an amen coming on, woofy :mrgreen:. I think you’ve got all the important stuff perfectly figured out.

I remind my mom often that is was HER ethics that formed me, not the church’s. She was secretly atheist, raising us Catholic (per Dad’s decree), so I think she often fears that her own intentions—her stellar examples of beyond-decent behavior—didn’t seep into us.

But they did.

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Hey Mia—
If my children grow up some day to write in a forum that they were raised to know decent behavior not from church doctrine, but from the example of their mother… I will know I have done something right. Props to your mom. People like her (and you) give me hope for the world.

But Mia I thought you never knew until much later that your mother was atheist/agnostic.

?

Either way, I share woofy’s sentiment. I go a little more lenient though with my kids. If they end up buying into the god concept, I hope that they will be clear minded enough to also know that it is, after all, a concept. Believe in it, okay, but also recognize that there is no hard proof. Pretty hard to do since my old religion so forcefully declares what it does with the frequency.

I am nervous about being vocal with my nontheism to my kids. Kids are impressionable. Worst case I can imagine is that I live with my kids knowing I don’t believe that a god exists, they turn into rebellious teens who often look for a reason to rebel and do the things teens can do, use my world view as an excuse… and then I get to be my wife’s punching bag in that she might say things like:

if you and I had been united and strong in a belief about god, this rebellion thing wouldn’t be happening.

or

This is all your fault. People without god have no need for morality as they do not answer to any higher authority

[quote author=“Noggin”]But Mia I thought you never knew until much later that your mother was atheist/agnostic.

?

That’s correct, Nogs. I didn’t really ‘know’ the truth of her feelings during those years until just recently, since we didn’t talk much about religion after the formative years. It was my vocalizing over the past several months (explaining to her about my shedding of belief) that brought out her confession that she had never believed. I think I intuitively knew she was not drawing her personal ethics from anything religious, but since we were a church-going family, there was always that implication. . . which pisses me off, because it prevented me from learning, early on, that one’s ethics and morals exist independent of any faith in the supernatural.

Anyway, it’s in retrospect that I’m able to see that it was HER ethics that sank into me, while everything I got from the church eventually proved less useful, and was even damaging—instilling fears related to natural sexuality, fear of my own thoughts, fear of hell. . . In fact, I can’t think of any aspect of Catholicism that wasn’t tied to some fear-mongering premise.

[quote author=“Noggin”]
I am nervous about being vocal with my nontheism to my kids. Kids are impressionable. Worst case I can imagine is that I live with my kids knowing I don’t believe that a god exists, they turn into rebellious teens who often look for a reason to rebel and do the things teens can do, use my world view as an excuse… and then I get to be my wife’s punching bag in that she might say things like:

if you and I had been united and strong in a belief about god, this rebellion thing wouldn’t be happening.

or

This is all your fault. People without god have no need for morality as they do not answer to any higher authority

you know how that thinking goes.

Noggin

They will likely rebel REGARDLESS. No teen really escapes it unless they’re buttoned up tighter than I sense either you or your wife would ever desire them to be.

Still, it’s a puzzle. How much should kids be informed of your thinking, and when? I wonder if there are discussion furums on the ex-christian boards where you could review other parents’ experiences along these lines. It wouldn’t be an exact road map, but would brace you for several possibilities.

I think, though, that your hyper-awareness and your caring, no-nonsense nature will be what shines through to your kids. There will be no doubt in their minds that you struggled valiently with this situation, voraciously consuming the available evidence, and that ultimately it came down to preserving the integrity of your own mind.

I just realized I lifted the last part of that from a famous quote. Let me dig it out. . .

“Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

If they’re continually encouraged along the lines of “to thine own self be true”, and are made familiar with terms like ‘intellectual honesty’, then I bet you’ll all manage just fine.

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I guess you guys ran off Dr Mount. It’s easy to troll the internet and see what’s being said about your religion, try and “correct” those who you view as misrepresenting your religion, then bail at the first sign of a losing confrontation.

Or he’s just to busy to respond. I’m sure that’s it’s. I mean it’s tough being a Mormon, the LDS Church basically requires that you reserve Sunday for Church services and basically all day worship, Monday night is family home evening, then there is the endless meetings they expect you to attend during the week. I’m not exaggerating either, my wife is Mormon, and if they always expect her to basically dedicate every waking hour to their “cause.” Some of the Mormons I know even spend Saturday nights in preparation for their church services the next day, usually preparing for these wimpy little messages and white-washed versions of the history of their prophets. All while professing that families come first.

The Mormon church likes to argue, quite emphatically I might add, that they are not a cult. Well that’s fine, call yourself a non-cult. But when reality begs to disagree, it’s hard to keep arguing otherwise. The constant dedication to “the church” (what I call intentional busy work simply to keep you constantly active), secret Temple Ceremonies (that are a blatant rip off of the Freemasons), secret underwear, undisclosed financial statements and reporting, spending endless money on new fancy buildings and chapels (that usually sit half empty), a large mall in down town Salt Lake City (I guess Jesus needs a shopping mall), it all points to “CULT”, even if you argue your not one.

Just like all cults, Mormons are essentially brain-washed (indoctrinated) into believing that they are the one true church on earth, and that no one can dispute that. It’s that simple, you can’t dispute it, in their view it’s a waste of time trying to. Although some, like Noggin, come to find out that there is more to the LDS Church than the facade they throw up.

Sorry to go off like that, I’m just a little put off by it all. They’ve got my wife, I guess I must accept that. To me it’s not worth throwing away all that we have, some silly little religion with a thin facade of half-truths, white-washed history, and odd theories and practices loosely thrown in to make it all come together.

I confess I don’t know how the mixed-religion marriages manage. It must take a lot of intentional focus on the best qualities between you, and an equal amount of looking past that which drives you nuts.

Maybe when it’s someone you’ve been with for a long time, though, you gradually adapt pretty well, assuming both are willing. In the end, it’s not so unlike the ‘leaving the toilet seat up for to millionth time’ or the ‘her relatives drive me out of my cotton-picking mind!’ adjustments that we all have to make in marriage. Or is the religious aspect worse than other areas where incapatibility comes up? It just seems so foundational. . . but maybe no more so than something like incompatible sex drives, sleep schedules, recreational interests, spending, etc.

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Hey Mia - we’ve been married 11 years. My wife was born into the Mormon religion. I don’t call myself Mormon even though I am a member of record. I converted but never bought on to the nonsense, so I’ve never considered myself Mormon. I was what was called a “jack mormon” but I never really understood what that meant, simply because I did not attend church services or participate in it. When I started to take a good look at the claims of the LDS Church, I realized it was hogwash, and I haven’t considered myself Mormon since. I was actually raised an Atheist, and basically carried those beliefs with me even after meeting my Mormon wife. She knew what she was getting into when she married me. We’ve made it work, sometimes it’s hard. Those little things you mentioned are nothing, non-issues in my household. It’s that larger issue that looms it’s ugly head every now and then.

Mormon apostate Steve Benson, grandson to the late Mormon prophet Ezra T Benson, posted a disturbing collection of inner memos he claims to be priveledged to due to his affiliation with Mormons in high places. He posted it yesterday on an Ex Mormon forum. Apparantly, the upper eschelon Mormon authority figures comprised of the 12 apostles and prophet have been sounding the alarm that the dire calamities surrounding the end times prior to Jesus 2nd coming is nearing. I am posting this here because it is a fine example of how cults employ fearmongering. From what I can gather, even the more mainstream christian cults have also started to ramp up the hysteria. Cult scare tactics are a key ingredient to keep the flock’s loins girded…
and quite loyal.

———————————————————————————————————

(Noggin explains: Boyd K. Packer considers himself to be an apostle to Jesus Christ just like Peter James & John etc are said to have been. Mormons believe and sustain such a notion. Packer is the most senior ranking Apostle of the 12. That makes him more like Peter.)

“Subject: From the Boyd K Packer Family

“Dear Friends,

““I believe there is validity in these statements. Ask for yourself and see where you and your family needs to improve your storage.

“We just got OIL for our 1 yr supply. Our Bishop said next to water it will be the most precious commodity. During the war, oil was traded for bushels of potatoes and fruit. I hope we will all be prepared a little better because we heard these words and have chosen to Follow the Prophets! . . .

“From the wife of Boyd K. Packer’s grandson:

“(The Packer family has two family reunions each year, one in July and one in December.)

“July 4, 2006- [Apostle] Packer gave counsel to his family as the patriarch to get their storage and preparedness items. He said, ‘The next step is to prepare to leave our homes if necessary.’

“From the wife of [Apostle] Packer’s son:

“December, 2006—Pres. Packer counseled his family to ‘Get prepared now. There is something serious coming very soon.’

“Adult session Saturday night of Stake conference in Holladay, Oct. 2006—[Apostle] Packer opened the meeting up for questions and answers. One brother asked him to comment on why there had been no talks on preparedness at general conference.

“[Apostle] Packer responded that [current prophet of god] Hinckley has told the brethren not to speak on preparedness anymore.

“We have been counseled on [preparing for catastrophies] for more than 100 years. ‘Now the Lord will preach His own sermons.’

“Leadership meeting of a South Jordan stake conference, Sept. 1, 2006, Presiding Bishop David Burton: Keep your eye on the Prophet. Being self-reliant has always been part of the church.

“Statistics show that no matter what the Church does, no higher percentage than 15% have storage. We are not going to say any more, but our people are going to need to be prepared.

“For example, what if somebody released a virus? What if it caused a pandemic? What if that led to a quarantine? What if the quarantine was enforced?

“The office of the Presiding Bishopric has tried to come up with a plan, but we don’t know what we could do. The responsibility lies with the head of each family.

“Again, my opinion is worth about O, but I believe that things are prepared to turn very, very ugly, unbelievably fast.

“When it happens, it can be like a car wreck. Everything is fine until all of a sudden a drunk driver comes from nowhere and hits you, a multi-car derby happens and then the world you know has changed in a matter of seconds.

“Things are speeding up.

“This ‘change’ could happen any time.

“The Gadiantons are on the move, big-time, and are about ready to spring a few surprises. (noggin explains: Gadiantons= Gadianton Robbers, these are an evil band of thieves who murdered and plundered north America in the book of Mormon text… using “Gadianton” to describe corrupt government and secret societies who murder to get gain is common in Mormonism)

“Everything we’ve been talking about appears to be in process of happening.

“The calm before the storm is about over.

“I pray that we will have more time, even four more years. But I don’t see how that is possible unless absolute
miracles happen.

“We must live like it is many years away, but prepare as if it is tomorrow.

“I am retiring from warning others to prepare and from being high profile to concentrate on preparing myself and my family. I am doing this after much fasting and prayer.

“Bishop Edgley’s comments at the stake conference a few weeks ago are critical.

“PREPARE, PREPARE, PREPARE, PREPARE.

“TEMPLE, TEMPLE, TEMPLE, TEMPLE.

“PRAY AND LISTEN, PRAY AND LISTEN, PRAY AND LISTEN, PRAY AND LISTEN.

“FOLLOW THE PROPHET, FOLLOW THE PROPHET, FOLLOW THE PROPHET, FOLLOW THE PROPHET.”

*****

There you have it, folks.

Consider yourself warned. ————————————————————————————————-

Noggin comments: You know, I have to hand it to Mormonism. Preparedness is wise, but to capitalize on it this way is a bit over the top. If something terrible does happen, the leaders of the church are now equipped to step up and tsk prophetically “we told you so”.